


Those Who Are Lost At Sea

by Narrybabes



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:19:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narrybabes/pseuds/Narrybabes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those who are lost at sea are not lost at all, they're just in their own world. Here, when you die in the ocean, you grow fins. </p>
<p>Niall has been a mermaid for years, and when Harry turns, he takes the newest boy under his wing and shows him the way. However, when Harry's body is never found, his best friend Liam is determined to find out what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Harry’s eyes followed the road in front of him, although he wasn’t really thinking about the soft turns and occasional bumps in the road, he was just driving from instinct. Instead his mind was focused on the past week. Uni had been stressful and for some reason his friends seemed to be ignoring him. Maybe they weren’t, maybe he was just overthinking it. Either way, today is what he needed. After another hour and a half of driving, singing along to the music that poured from his speakers while he did so, Harry parked and collected everything he needed from the trunk of his car. The sky was overcast, making the whole scene before him a dull shade of grey. The cold March air nipped at his nose, making him reconsider his decision to come out here. He quickly pushed the thought away, knowing this and only this could make his week at least decent.

 

As Harry tugged at the long string attached to the zipper that ran along his back, he starred along the horizon for a moment, taking in the Anglesey shore as the frigid waves crashing atop his feet. He stood there until he could no longer feel the cold, only the numb sensation that was left behind. Harry tried to not think about how there was no one either on the beach or in the water, his car the only one in the parking lot. His mind wandered back to the surf report he had read through this morning, explaining that today was certainly not the day to surf. The waves were expected to be insanely big due to a storm quite a ways out. Normally, news of these waves would have drawn daring surfers from all over England, but the harsh March weather on top of the danger kept people at home.

 

Maybe that’s what really made Harry come out here, the thought of being alone, only the waves and his board to accompany him. Harry drew in a sharp breath through his now slightly blue lips, and half ran into the waves, his long surfboard under his arm until the water was deep enough to get onto the board. The bitter cold salt water flooded into his wetsuit, causing a chill that seemed to sink to his bones. He paddled through the waves and eventually got far enough from the shore that he could successfully surf.

 

After he had been surfing long enough for his wet suit to warm up and he had caught several nice waves, Harry just sat on his board, waiting. The water had calmed almost completely, the waves now so small they just lifted Harry marginally. Harry became distracted with his own hair, messing with the wet curls that were flopped across his forehead. He was so focused on the brown locks that he almost missed the movement in the corner of his eye.

Almost.

He wasn’t sure if it was just a ripple in the water or some sea life, but he hoped it wasn’t the latter. Harry’s stomach dropped at the possibility of a shark, but he quickly assured himself that it was extremely unlikely. He looked back at the open ocean and his jaw dropped as he saw the largest wave he’d ever seen crawling towards him, getting taller by the second. Harry started paddling as fast as he could, determined to catch this beautiful wave. He popped up and stood on the board at just a few moments too late. He caught his balance and stood up straight as the wave curled above him. Harry’s chest tightened as he realized he was too far back in the barrel and when the wave broke, he would more than likely be taken under with it. He looked for the safest way out in a panic, but in turn, caused himself to slip and force his board out from under him.

 

He scrambled to grab his board but all too soon his head was under the surface and he was doing somersaults, his body being thrashed about until, finally, he stopped and quickly found the surface. He swam up and gasped for air. He was facing the shore and he knew he was too far away for anyone to hear him if he called for help. Not that anyone was there. Just as another wave was about to break above him and push him back down into the bleak water below, Harry swore he saw a flash of blonde peeking above a wave. He was about to call out for help when he was pushed back into the ice water. The salt water filled his open mouth and as he took in a breath from the shock of being back underwater, the water half-flooded his lungs.

  
He was violently flung about, his chest burning from the inside out. He tried to keep his eyes open, but the ocean water both stung his eyes and made everything too blurry to really make out anything. He tried to swim up but the water was too powerful, holding him so far down that his ears felt like they would burst any second. Harry was flung against something sharp and he yelled out in pain out of instinct, only to regret it immediately. Any air that had been left in his lungs was now gone, bubbling up to the surface that Harry couldn’t reach. Ribbons of red now danced around Harry, curling in the current that kept Harry from swimming to the surface. His vision was starting to tunnel and at this point he was praying to just die or at least pass out so he would no longer have to endure the most painful thing he’d ever gone through. He could feel the saltwater ripping at his lungs, feeling like a fire that grew hotter by the second. Moments before his vision totally vanished, his stomach clenched and the acidic contents of it lurched up through his already burning throat. Finally, his senses cut off and his muscles gave out. The last thing he saw was a silhouette darting across the surface of the water and for an instant, Harry thought whatever it was was coming towards him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is v short but the next is much longer, I promise!


	2. Chapter 2

Harry felt a warmth across his face as he woke up. He searched his brain for what had happened and his brow furrowed as he recalled the feeling of drowning. He realized that he felt good and let out a sigh of relief.

 

“I’m in heaven,” he said happily.

 

“If that’s what you wanna call it, then sure,” a voice said from next to him. Harry jumped and let out a small scream as he rolled off of whatever he had been laying on. He fell about a meter until he splashed into the warm water below. Memories of what he was positive was his death flooded back once his body was right back in the water and he let out a scream as if he could feel the burn in his chest yet again.

 

Harry realized that he could see perfectly clear under the light blue water and as he gasped, he expected to feel the now familiar burn of salt water along his throat. To his shock, he felt nothing. It felt as natural as breathing air was. He cautiously inhaled and exhaled the warm water and he felt nothing out of the ordinary. The brunette tried to rationalize why this was happening. Maybe his heaven was just underwater? It made sense, seeing as he had spent practically his whole childhood in the ocean and it was how he died. Maybe that’s just how this worked. Harry closed his eyes and tried to stay calm. He assured himself that this had to be heaven or something of the sorts. He wasn’t in pain, so that was a good sign, right?

 

“You done freakin’ out?” The same voice from before asked. Harry’s eyes popped open. The voice was not muddied or distorted as it should have been underwater. Harry looked around until his eyes landed on the only possible source of the voice, several meters away. A boy who looked about Harry’s age was just looking at him with a raised eyebrow. The boy’s blonde hair floating softly around him is the water and Harry could see his blue eyes, even though they looked incredibly clouded. Harry also could have sworn the boy shimmered for a moment when a ray of light dragged along his cheekbone. Harry’s eyes scanned down this mystery boy across his bare chest and down until he saw something that made his scream once again.

 

“Tail! Tail! Tail tail tail! What the fuck?! Tail!” Harry exclaimed as he scrambled backwards.

 

“Guess that’s a no,” the boy mumbled as he started to swim towards Harry. Harry’s eyes bulged as he stared at the movement of the long blue… thing that was where his legs should be. “Listen if you calm down I can explain it all to you. How bout we get above water, just cause that’s what you’re used to, yeah?” Harry wordlessly nodded and watched as this boy or fish or whatever he was pushed himself back up onto the rock that seemed to be what Harry had been laying on earlier. Harry followed his actions and sat across from the blonde on the boulder. Harry just stared with an open mouth for who knows how long. “You know, it’s rude to stare,” the boy finally spoke up.

 

Harry finally looked up at the boy’s face and he was taken aback at how his eyes no longer seemed distant or clouded. His hair was now flopped across his forehead, dripping water across his remarkably cute face. Harry had no clue what to say so he just spoke the first thing on his mind. “You have a tail.” The blonde just chuckled, looking away from Harry and out to the water in the cove as he did so. “What about that is funny?” Harry questioned.

 

“The fact that you haven’t noticed your own.”

 

“What?” Harry asked, not sure he had heard him right because no he did not have a tail. He looked down at his legs and screamed when he was met with green scales. He fell backwards off the boulder once more and once he was in the water, he moved it around, propelling himself through the water. He couldn’t look away from what had replaced his legs and he bumped into the rock wall along the side of the cove. On his sides, the dark blue scales went up to his waist but in the center and likely on the back, although he couldn’t see that, the tail was down at his pelvis, forming a v. He heard a splash and looked up to see the stranger back in the water with him, still laughing.

 

“Get back on the boulder and I’ll explain it, but if you fall off it again I may bust a rib from laughing at you so much.” Harry did what he was told and maneuvered himself onto the rock and the blonde got up right after, in half the time it had taken Harry to get up.

 

“What happened. I swear to god I died back there.”

 

“You did,” he simply remarked. Harry waited for him to continue but he didn’t.

 

“Well… what is this? Why am I a mermaid?” Harry asked. The blonde’s eyes fixed on Harry’s chest before he snickered once more.

 

“You’re not.”

 

“What? What the hell am I then? I’m like half human half fish! Isn’t that a mermaid?”

 

“Sorry mate, but I don’t see a rack on you.”

 

“Huh? Oh, okay. Merman, whatever. How did this happen?”

 

“When someone dies in the ocean they become one of us, pretty simple. Well, most people. We have to leave some people just laying around or else humans could get suspicious.”

 

“So I did really die, right?” Harry asked.

 

“Yup. You hit your head pretty hard on that coral reef back there. You actually got the attention of a shark, had to make sure he didn’t eat cha.”

 

“You saw it?”

 

“Yeah, I was almost certain you saw me at one point.” Harry’s fists clenched at his side and his jaw tightened.

 

“Why didn’t you fucking rescue me then? You just let me drown?! Do you know how painful that is?” Harry half yelled. The blonde’s face dropped and he now wore a stern expression.

 

“Yeah. I do,” Niall softly said. His face softened before he continued. “A-and I didn’t save you because… um… we’re not allowed to interfere. We can’t just have people blabbing that merpeople exist.”

 

“Merpeople?”

 

“Yes, merpeople. Mermaid is a very gender specific term. Now what do you want to know?”

 

“Your name for starters.”

 

“Oh, yeah. I’m Niall, you?”

 

“Harry.”

 

“Nice to meet ya.”

 

“You too, now tell me everything. Like why you sparkled back there and why I can breathe up here and underwater and why I didn’t notice I had a tail and everything.” Harry demanded.

 

“Alright, mer-anatomy. That’s a good place to start. Well we have lungs and gills, so we can breathe underwater and up in open air. You have gills along your ribs, two under your jaw, one on each side, and some on your low back. Your lungs are the exact same as before you died. And I glittered or shimmered or whatever you wanna call it because we have tiny scales all over our skin. They’re super thin everywhere but our tails and they’re clear so they’re hard to notice most of the time,” Niall paused for a moment and furrowed his brow in thought. “I think that’s it, aside from that, you’re just like you used to be. Oh! We have two pairs of eyelids, your normal ones and ones that go side to side. They’re clear and for seeing underwater so the saltwater doesn’t get on our eyes. But yeah, that’s all, I’m pretty sure. Also you probably didn’t notice it because it’s just a part of you now and it shouldn’t feel foreign.”

 

Harry laid back onto the sun heated rock, staring up at the light blue sky above. “I… what the fuck. I can’t wrap my head aroung this. I’m a mermaid or mer-whatever. What will my friends and family think happened to me?”

 

“Probably just lost at sea, I dunno,” Niall shrugged.

 

“Do you like… age?” Harry asked, looking over at the blonde whose face was turned up toward the sun, basking in it.

 

“Nope.”

 

“This is literally Twilight.” Harry moaned.

 

“What?” Niall asked.

 

“Twilight.”

 

“Like… at dusk?”

 

“No… like vampires.”

 

“Are you senile? Vampires aren’t real. They’re make believe.” Niall scoffed.

 

“Well up until about 5 minutes ago I thought mermaids were make believe, too. I mean, how do you just all of the sudden become a mythical creature?”

 

“It’s not all of the sudden, it takes a few weeks. You’ve been out for around a month I think. Oh! I remembered another difference, your fingers are webbed now.” Harry looked down at his hands and in between his fingers, light, almost see through, green webbing went up a few centimeters.

 

“So, what do we do now?” Harry asked once he was finished examining his hands. Niall, with eyes still closed, flipped over onto his stomach and rested his head in the crook of his arm.

 

“It’s your first day, just relax and take it all in,” he said as he ran his fingers through his wet hair, pushing it up into a little quiff.

 

Harry was quiet for a few minutes before speaking up again. "So you really don't know Twilight? The books and movies, not the time of day or whatever."

 

"Never heard of it," Niall mumbled.

 

"How old are you?"

 

"20."

 

"When did you become a mermaid?"

 

"9 years ago. And for the last time, I'm not a mermaid."

 

"Oh, so not that long ago." Niall didn't reply, he just nuzzled further into his arm, getting comfortable. Harry finally took in where he was. A small cove with an arch that led out to what looked like open ocean. Light brown cliffs adorned with shrubbery enclosed the area. The water below was so clear that Harry saw the colorful coral reef below and the fish swimming to and fro around their homes. Harry began to watch one fish in particular, an ordinary clown fish. It peeked in and out of it's anemone and occasionally came out with another clown fish. The more Harry concentrated on the small thing, the louder a soft voice in the back of his head got. Eventually he could just make out the whisper.

 

"Go go go go. Gotta go." The voice startled Harry and he immediately lost his concentration. He would later learn from Niall that he was listening to the fish's thoughts, not that it thought in English. That would be outrageous. His new mind simply translated it into words he could comprehend. Harry was a bit distraught at the random voice in his head, so his eyes wandered around again. They landed on the light blue fins at the bottom of Niall’s tail. The tail as a whole was probably 2 meters long, much longer than he would have expected. Different shades of blue scales were scattered throughout the tail, but the main color was a slightly darker blue. Harry’s eyes dragged along the blonde’s bare torso, noticing the four pinkish-purple gills along his side, each placed between a pair of ribs. After unsuccessfully avoiding admiring the pale boy’s toned muscles, Harry finally noticed what was one of the more obvious things on Niall, a dorsal fin that Niall had failed to mention in his mer-anatomy lesson. It wasn’t that of a dolphin or shark, but the scaley, bony type dorsal fin many fish have. It was currently laying flat against his spine and the color was a faded version of his tail. From the position Niall was in, Harry couldn’t see the other gills he had mentioned, but he figured he got the gist of this new body he had. He laid back onto the rock and after a while, fell asleep, dreams of swimming with sharks and diving with dolphins swimming in his head.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG SCHOOL IS KILLING MEEEEEEEEE  
> and it's not very long but i had to post something i'm v sorry

“Fish out of water! Fish out of water! Fish out of water!” A voice woke Niall before he was pushed off the boulder into the ocean below. Without even opening his eyes, he knew the culprit.

“Damn it, Louis!” Niall called out once his head popped up above the surface. The blonde looked up and saw his snickering friend staring right back.

“That’s what you get for not introducing me to our new little friend here,” Louis said as he pointed behind him. Harry craned his neck to see Niall in the water below, emphasizing his jaw line, in turn making Niall’s breath catch in his throat. Harry’s hair had dried, forming messy yet perfect curls around his face. Niall dunked his head under the water in an attempt to stop focusing on the small pout that Harry currently wore on his soft pink lips, but it was hard for Niall to not think about running his finger along the lines of definition that ran across Harry’s skin when he was easily the most attractive person Niall had seen. Niall dove to the bottom of the cove and and sat in the sand to watch a school of fish dart back and forth until he figured he had cleared his mind enough. With two powerful flicks of his tail, Niall was back at the surface of the water, pushing himself back onto the boulder. Harry and Louis were just talking quietly until they noticed the blonde climb up with them.

“Whatcha guys talkin’ bout?” Niall worriedly asked. Louis had been his best friend for the last 9 years and he always knew almost instantly when Niall liked someone or thought they were attractive, and although he doubted it, Louis could be telling Harry about why Niall had just hid underwater for a few minutes.

“Just getting to know our newest friend, seeing as you won’t introduce me,” Louis said. He patted the rock next to him, telling Niall to join them. Niall scooted over to them and once he was comfortably seated, the two brunettes continued their conversations. “So how old are you, Harold?” Harry furrowed his eyebrows for a moment at the unfamiliar name but quickly replied.

“I just turned 20 last month, or two months ago, maybe… What’s the date?”

“Mid-April, I think. Mid to late. We don’t have much reason to keep track of the days but I’m sure someone knows,” Louis explained.

“Oh, okay, well I turned 20 on the second of February,” Harry looked up at Louis’ face as he spoke. “Woah, your tail is like… the same as your eyes! Blue with a bit of green…”

“Yeah, that’s the way it is for everyone. See, yours is green and Niall’s is blue, just like your guys’ eyes,” Louis explained.

“Oh, that’s cool. So how old are you? And how long have you been… whatever we are?” Harry asked.

“I’m 22, I have been for… what year is it? Oh yeah, almost 15 years.” The conversation continued and Louis and Niall found out that Harry was a college student who was originally from Holmes Chapel. Harry learned that his suspicions were correct and Niall was from Ireland and Louis had mentioned where he was from but Harry forgot as soon as he was told. Harry’s stomach rumbled loudly, causing both Louis and Niall to glance down at his torso.

“Geez, Niall, you’re a crum mentor aren’t ya? You don’t show him around, you don’t introduce him to anyone, you don’t feed him, c’mon now,” Louis teased.

“He’s only been up for a few hours, give me a break! Anyway Harry,” Niall turned his attention back to the curly haired boy, “do you wanna grab something to eat.”

“Yes, please,” he quietly replied.

“Alright, follow me,” Niall said before he and Louis dove into the water below. Harry followed them and soon they were out the cove swimming through the warm ocean. Harry wished they had swam slower, but he knew they if he didn’t keep up, he would get lost in the vast waters. The views below him were astonishing, fish he’d never seen before and colors so vivid and bright that he hardly knew where to look. He just hoped he’d get a chance to take some time to admire this new world he was now a part of. After a few minutes of swimming, a small island came into view. Harry followed them up a river that led to the middle of the land mass. Louis and Niall were much faster than Harry in the water, so the short swim ended with Harry panting as soon as his head popped above the water. Harry laid in the water for a moment to catch his breath and when he finally looked around to find Niall and Louis, he saw them perched on the bank of the river eating what looked to be mangos.

"Are those mangos?" Harry asked as he swam over.

"Yup, want one?" Niall said as he reached above his head to grab another that was hanging from a low branch.

"Yeah, for some reason I thought that you guys, or we I guess, would eat fish or something along those lines," Harry said.

"Eat fish?!" Louis shouted in horror. "That would be like you eating your pet dog!"

"Oh, so what do we eat?"

"You have the same taste buds and stomach, you eat pretty much the same. Lots of fruits, some seaweed," Niall said as he tossed the fruit to Harry. He caught it in midair and examined it before picking at the skin to get to the edible fruit beneith. "Eat the skin, it's the best part," Niall pointed out.

"But I thought you weren't supposed to? Is it different for us?" Harry curiously asked.

**  
**"Dunno, all I know is that it tastes good and it's never cause any of us problems," Niall stated before taking another bite of his nearly finished mango. Harry bit into the mango and realized that Niall was totally right, it was better with the skin. Once he finished his snack, he scooted himself onto the bank of the river and laid alongside Niall, falling back asleep as the bright sun warmed his back.


End file.
